Israel trucks 10,000 tons a week in food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies to Gaza. Yet the "Freedom" Flotilla apologists insist that Gaza is suffering under the brutal whip-hand of the Israeli occupiers, who maintain a blockade of Gaza for no other purpose than to keep the poor Gazans hungry and in penury.
The pictures above would seem to undermine that characterization of the situation, as the Gaza City markets seem as full of staples, treats and delicacies as any in Israel or any other free country. And my guess is there would be no products to sell if there weren't customers to buy them, which means that not everyone is jobless and penniless.
Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't want to live in that hellhole by the Mediterranean, even if I were an Arab. But it sure isn't because of conditions created or maintained by Israel. Gaza, in case you forgot, is run by the "bad" terrorists--Hamas--as opposed to the "good" terrorists who run the West Bank. Hamas rules with an iron fist and, like most authoritarian regimes, treats its own kind even worse than its enemies. Just ask the Fatah members who were summarily shot or lynched by their co-religionists when Hamas took over Gaza in 2007.
In addition, Gazans receive more international aid per capita than any other peoples on earth. There is a United Nations agency (UNRWA) devoted solely to the so-called "refugees" of Gaza and the West Bank with a budget of over $400 million a year, most of which finds its way into the personal accounts of the corrupt apparatchiks of Hamas and Fatah. If the Gazans can't live on whats left over, isn't Israel's fault.
Not that facts make a damn bit of difference when it comes to the now universally accepted narrative of Israel-as-purveyor-of-death-and-destruction, which casts the Palestinians as the poor innocent downtrodden victims of Jewish racism and triumphalism. The narrative is so absurd on its face that anyone who buys into it either has an axe to grind or is painfully and woefully naive and softheaded.
No Israeli public relations campaign, no matter how brilliantly executed, can ever hope to persuade people in either category.
The only thing left for Israel to do is to unhinge itself from an unhinged world. It has no natural or permanent allies, only natural and permanent enemies. If the United States is among them, then so be it. It is time for Israel to realize that it needs no person or country to support it or recognize its right to exist. It is time for Israel to turn toward the Source of its salvation and ultimate redemption for comfort and strength, for that, it would seem, is its only hope.
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